The Western Collection 1978 Stark Museum of Art (paperback) 1978

Description: 'This pledge to submit facts appeared in the preface of a journal written by a forty niner in the mid-nineteenth century. The spirit of truth-seeking contained in this statement has permeated accounts of the American West since Thomas Jefferson instructed Meriwether Lewis and William Clark in 1803 to make "observations... with great pain and accuracy." From the early nineteenth century to the present, so do artists who portray the West characteristically include documentation among their objectives. In 1819 Samuel Seymour and Titian Ramsay Peale became the first artists to depict the Rocky Mountains when they traveled westward with a government expedition led by Major Stephen H. Long. The contingent of scientists accompanying the expedition, and this included topographical artists like Peale and Seymour, were instructed "to acquire as thorough and accurate knowledge as may be practicable, of a portion of our country, which is daily becoming more interesting, but which is as yet imperfectly known." Somewhat later, accurate, objective observation was so keenly admired that the artistic works of two great artist-naturalists, Alexander Wilson and John James Audubon, were compared closely by natural historians for fidelity to nature. Both men were contemptuous of "closet naturalists," as Wilson dubbed those who did not study nature first hand, and both traveled extensively to observe and collect specimens.' Wilson was led to art by science, since drawing was then the best means naturalists had to document their finds. With Audubon, however, the balance between science and art tipped towards art. Artistically excelling Wilson, Audubon was more able to capture spirit and energy by portraying birds in animated poses and by placing them in real, but imaginatively heightened, backgrounds. However, in Philadelphia where the study of natural history flourished, Audubon was criticized for dramatization while Wilson was admired for straightforward presentation. Accuracy is still an obiective of western art. When a contemporary cowboy-artist, Drake Seaman, is publicized by his gallery in Scottsdale, Arizona, he is described as a painter who combines a working knowledge of the West with artistic skill in order to create paintings with "no historical fantasy, no make-believe." Both western artists and the public have widely assumed that accurate observation of detail leads...(from introduction)

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